Sometimes we fail to remember the whole point of what Democracies were meant to achieve; sometimes that word “prosperity” gets in the way of everything else, and we forget that ALL, that were supposed to be served by this type of society. The rich; the famous; the elite – that were suppose to never even exist in a democracy – have, somehow, once again pushed the word ALL out of the picture!
And, even more importantly, the word “freedom” has, itself, clouded out the “choices” that that freedom was supposed to make universally available to ALL! Suddenly, freedom has instead become “advantage”; advantage for a special group that negates the very point behind that word “democracy!”
We look around us, and see glaring problems that were never suppose to arise in any society, let alone a democratic one. Poverty; homelessness; foreclosures; bankruptcies; and, mounting government austerity, debt and taxes; all strangling the very society that was formed to make such things wholly impossible. All of these things come about because, somehow, what is believed is more important than what is! Instead of trying to fix the methods behind what is, we ignore the methods entirely, and find fault in the people afflicted through these methods. The real problem is that when the freedom, in a free economy, does not have any responsibility or accountability to any other segment of that economy, or to the society that supports that same economy, then that freedom itself becomes a liability, instead of an asset. Everyone, doing what they please, without concessions to the others in the same society, was not what the freedom of democracy was suppose to mean. The clash between these two ideas of freedom – that of “free enterprise”, and that of free governmental and societal processes – is wreaking havoc on all democratic societies today.
Also, the ALL of any society (or country), is not the ALL of planet earth! An economically globalized planet earth is creating problems for all governments created to serve the society of any single country. Governments serve societies, not the whole population of the earth. Yet, the clash between these two ideas is wholly ignored today.
Further, there is also a problem of ALL not actually being ALL. Societies are no longer homogeneous groups; but, instead, a large group of groups. Because of things like poverty and ignorance, societies are becoming groups of factions that all have their own priorities and goals. Thus societies can no longer even be called societies, as such, because a society should possess not only a common identity, but common priorities and goals. We have shown before, where this splintering into factions is arising: political parties and beliefs; religions; and economic prosperity3. Thus, “freedom” as proposed by a democratic society is instead a type of “chaos”, where “everyone for themselves” has replaced the responsible freedom that a true democracy was created to further. Both Presidents, Washington and Lincoln, understood this:

“I have already intimated to you the
danger of parties in the state… Let me
now take a more comprehensive view, and
warn you in the most solemn manner against
the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.”George Washington, “The Farewell Address”
"As I would not be a slave,
so I would not be a master –
this expresses my idea of democracy –
whatever differs from this,
to the extent of the difference, is no democracy."Abraham Lincoln

As Lincoln mentions, the elitism that the economy has furthered has destroyed democracy's freedom. And, the political groups that thrive on this same elitism, are tearing our society into pieces, at odds with each other, as Washington intimated. So, also, has poverty divided society, with the help of religious beliefs and ethnic migrations that have resulted in ethnic and religious ghettos. Our beliefs have clouded out the true basis of how we think about things; and, they have made true solutions based on “what works”, impossible to achieve, because thought is held captive by these same beliefs.
The physical sciences grew out of human rationality and experimentation. Beliefs had to be proved, before they became the methods that science endorsed. But, because of society's grounding in economic elitism, religions, and political idealism, the functioning of society was abandoned to the realm of nebulous truths, which made the same old techniques of implementing society unchangeable, despite the results they achieved. Today, all the problems, society has, are approached without any innovation whatsoever. “What is believed” has become the only credo; and “what works” is not brought about, through its success in ALL cases, but only as it pertains to certain groups, who then tout the aphorism, “Now, why isn't it working for you?”, to all the other groups, for whom it hasn't worked. That is how the ALL of society and democracy has been pushed into the background, instead of the foreground, it deserves! Because of the group, the ALL has disappeared; and, what is worse, any innovations that would succeed for ALL, are not even tried, let alone accomplished! Thus the methods of today's societies are cast in the concrete of unchangeable beliefs and methods; and, the portion of society that suffers, only becomes ever larger, while that small segment that prospers becomes ever smaller. ALL is a word never mentioned, because it has been changed into the FEW with the advantage – the very thing that democracy abhorred! So democracy is not, what works for ALL; but what works for the MASTERS; as Lincoln said, those same MASTERS that democracy denies even having!

FOOTNOTES

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1
ALL, is a relative term that has different meanings, according to the context, it refers to. We will show that the only ALL, citizens of any free society must truly address, is the ALL of that particular society, to which they belong; and, that that ALL should be ALL, not only SOME.

2
This question is especially important in the 2016 Presidential election, whose candidates have received so much notice and fanfare, recently, in the news media.